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Anvil Helps To Make The World Of Business Travel Simpler And Safer For Clients

Anvil states that new ways of entering business travel data into its award-winning Riskmatics® solution will open up a world of opportunities for its global client base.

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Jan 19, 2018

Anvil Helps To Make The World Of Business Travel Simpler And Safer For Clients

Travel and operational risk company, Anvil, states that new ways of entering business travel data into its award-winning Riskmatics® solution will open up a world of opportunities for its global client base. Its ability to automatically read and upload booking data from hundreds of major airlines, hotel chains and travel operators allows clients to expand their travel booking options without compromising their travel risk management provision.

Anvil’s risk management and traveller tracking system already connects directly with all of the major Global Distribution Systems (GDSs) and Travel Management Companies, providing a seamless and secure service for its clients. But the company is all too aware that not every organisation may wish to go down the standard GDS route when managing their travel bookings.

Matthew Judge, Anvil’s Group Managing Director, states: “The nature of business travel is changing. Those of us providing risk management solutions need to embrace these changes. Forcing organisations and their travellers down a single path is not an option. To remain competitive, organisations need more choice and more flexibility in how they deal with ever changing travel requirements. We need to be a part of the solution not a barrier to change.”

To this end, Anvil’s automated email parsing service is helping to revolutionise the way in which organisations manage their travel bookings whilst maintaining the safety and security of their personnel. The completion of time consuming forms, still required to upload non GDS booking data into some travel risk management platforms, is something Anvil clients no longer have to deal with.

Anvil’s email parser offers huge potential. It can process booking data in 27 different languages, from over 100 different airlines, 70 hotel chains, all the major car rental companies, rail operators and cruise operators. It can also support bookings made via over 100 other travel service providers including the likes of Uber, ebookers and lastminute.com.

With the ability to upload data from all of these providers directly into clients’ Riskmatics® platforms, Anvil can provide travellers themselves with far more choice and flexibility whilst still enabling travel managers, and those responsible for the safety and security of their travelling population, to have total visibility of current and future itineraries, regardless of the booking method.

Peter Davies, Anvil’s Head of Research of Technical Development, explains: “Our automated email parsing is extremely simple and effective. Any of our clients booking travel directly, say via an online booking site, simply forwards their e-ticket to a designated Anvil inbox. Our email parser then captures the data from that ticket and automatically uploads it to the clients’ Riskmatics® platform. Effectively, we’ve closed the gap on travel that’s been booked outside of the GDSs.”

Although email parsing is by no means a new phenomenon, Anvil’s model goes a step further by bringing in human exception handling. If, for any reason, a ticket can’t be read by the automated system, rather than being rejected, it’s escalated to a human operative who reads the ticket, and then manually deciphers and enters the details. This reduces the need to go back to the travel booker and request resubmission.

Matthew Judge concludes: “With the nature of business travel ever changing, organisations need to have more options when it comes to booking travel but they also need to ensure that they can still provide the appropriate level of duty of care to their travelling and remote personnel. Travellers too, are now demanding more freedom and flexibility to go ‘off-piste’ with their bookings. Business trips can’t always be booked months in advance. Plans change, meetings move. We need to enable organisations to be more adaptable, more flexible and yet still remain resilient in the face of risk. We’re able to offer our clients far greater choices, empowering travel teams and the travellers themselves to make last minute decisions and choose alternative travel options whilst still remaining within the parameters of the processes and systems put in place to protect them.”

Anvil’s award-winning Riskmatics® system delivers 360 degree threat awareness and dynamic intelligence on volatile incidents, mapped against your critical assets, so you can take informed action. For more on Riskmatics® visit https://www.anvilgroup.com/riskmatics/

You can also visit Anvil at this year’s Business Travel Show, London Olympia, 21-22 February.

Jan 19, 2018

Diners Club Launch A New Company Card At The Business Travel Show

The new Diners Club Card programme, is specifically designed to remove the pain of business expense claim management for travellers and administrators alike.

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Jan 19, 2018

Diners Club Launch A New Company Card At The Business Travel Show

The new Diners Club Card programme, which will be launched at the show, is specifically designed to remove the pain of business expense claim management for travellers and administrators alike.

Diners Club have ensured business travellers can use their account – anywhere and everywhere – there are no merchant acceptance gaps! They’ve taken away the pain of VAT receipt capture and VAT reconciliation. No more matching receipts or searching for VAT details. Just snap it, save it and your free to get on with your actual business. Diners Club International invented the credit card back in 1950, today it’s reinvented. They are showcasing their new company card on stand B918 along with their full range of Travel Payment and Virtual Card solutions.

“The new Company Card completes a phase of innovation and development that supports the Diners Club proposition, a complete range of payment solutions for Corporate Travel. All the products have global acceptance assured, and serve the needs for Travel Accounts, Virtual cards and [LJ1] Company Cards throughout the industry. Vat receipting and reconciliation is another great example of our flexibility and commitment to putting customer needs at the centre of what we do” said Adrian Steele, Marketing Director at Diners Club. “We are delighted to be launching the product at the Business Travel Show and to offer a 50% discount on annual fees to all enquiries from the Show. We welcome the challenge to demonstrate there is no better payment provider for the corporate traveller and corporate travel.”

Buyers can find Diners Club International on stand B914 in the GTMC pavilion at the Business Travel Show, which takes place 21-22 February 2018 at London’s Olympia

Jan 19, 2018

New York Times Bestselling Author Steve Martin Revealed As Keynote Speaker At Business Travel Show

The bestselling author of “Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion” will deliver a speech on how to use the psychology of persuasion to manage travel programmes.

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Jan 19, 2018

New York Times Bestselling Author Steve Martin Revealed As Keynote Speaker At Business Travel Show

Steve Martin, bestselling author, British Airways Business Life columnist and CEO of the behavioural change consultancy, Influence at Work, has been revealed as the keynote speaker at Business Travel Show. Steve will deliver his keynote speech from 10am-11am on the 22nd February.

In his keynote address Steve will discuss how businesses can achieve travel programme goals when people are spread across regions, cultures, and time zones, and playing the “I’m in charge” card is inappropriate. He will also demonstrate how the psychology of persuasion can influence customers to stay within policy, book travel in advance and travel efficiently.

Steve Martin, CEO, Influence at Work, commented: “When you talk about persuasion science to people, they often look at you quizzically and say: ‘Persuasion isn’t a science. Persuasion is a gift that a lucky few people are born with.’ They think if you have it, you’re probably a little bit more successful in life, and if you don’t have it, you just have to learn to live without it. That’s fundamentally wrong. In exactly the same way that you might learn economics or engineering, it’s entirely possible to learn about persuasion.

“There is a set of universal principals for successful influence, and we can learn them, implement them and become skilled ourselves. They work in every context, in every interaction, across cultures and across industries. It’s not that there’s a set of principles unique to business travel; the key is to understand how the universal principles apply to your industry. That’s primarily what the focus of the presentation at the show is going to be.”

Steve co-authored the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Business Week International bestselling book “Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion”. The book has sold over 900,000 copies and has been translated into 27 languages. In 2009 Yes! was recognised by the Harvard Business Review as one of their ‘Breakthrough Ideas for Business Today’. A fully revised and updated 10th Anniversary Edition of Yes! was published in early 2017.

Steve is also a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review and the Institute of Leadership and Management journal Edge as well as writing a monthly business column for the British Airways in-flight business magazine.

David Chapple, event director, Business Travel Show commented: “By helping businesses and business leaders think about their communications and influence Steve has delivered some impressive results. He has applied his universal principles to influence outcomes in many different sectors and scenarios, including helping the UK Government to persuade more people to file their tax returns on time and advising a leading hotel group on how to encourage their guests to reuse their towels. We can all learn from Steve’s principles both professionally and personally and it will no doubt be a fascinating talk. We’re expecting his session to be busy so are advising visitors to arrive early in order to ensure they get a seat.”

Steve will also join a panel discussion on the 22nd February at 11.30am -12.30pm on the topic of “Nudge, nudge – Engage your travellers to choose smarter behaviour” giving Business Travel Show attendees two opportunities to hear Steve speak.

Also speaking at Business Travel Show is Keesup Choe, CEO of PredictX, who works with travel managers across fortune 500 companies to provide predictive insights into their travel programme using AI.PredictX organises information and combines this with predictive models and workflows to drive and automate decisions. PredictX and Influence at Work will announce their partnership at the show to combine predictive analytics and behavioural science to enable travel managers to impact their travellers’ behaviour.

“Today’s travel managers understand their success depends on their ability to influence people’s behaviour. Travel is unique in that there are thousands of indirect buyers making their own purchasing decisions,” said Keesup.

“Positively changing business travellers’ behaviour represents the largest potential for realising saving whilst ensuring traveller satisfaction. We are excited to be partnering with Influence at Work to solve these issues for travel managers.”

Corporate Traveller, the UK’s largest travel management company specialising in clients with an SME business travel spend of £50K to £2M, is launching ‘YOUR.CT’ a new travel technology platform designed purely to meet the needs of its customer base.

YOUR.CT gives bookers, travellers and managers a single access point, via their customised dashboard, to functionality and information that is relevant to their business travel needs. This includes pre-trip approval, booking options, profile management, traveller tracking, travel alerts, reports, invoice data and travel policy. The platform can be accessed via PC, tablet or mobile device.

In addition, Corporate Traveller is launching YOUR.CT MOBILE, a bespoke app fully integrated with YOUR.CT’s booking platform which gives travellers access to their flight and hotel bookings all in one place while they are on the move. Travellers can use the app for online check in, flight status alerts, weather forecasts, currency conversion and destination guides.

Depending on the type of user, YOUR.CT’s dashboard is configured to give instant access to:

Approve and request – travellers can make requests easily and managers can give approval efficiently, helping to drive compliance and savings

Booking – YOUR.CT’s powerful new online booking solution is Seeqa which enables travellers and bookers to request, search and book flights, hotels, rail, car and other ancillary services. Navigation is easy and bookings can be completed within just a few clicks. Searches also take into account the traveller’s preferences and booking

Traveller tracking – YOUR.CT’s state of the art risk map technology enables users to view where their travellers are in the world at any given time and effectively manage their safety. Key functionality includes a snapshot of travellers at risk by type, location and flight number; traveller location mapping and any critical alerts for those countries; forward trip monitoring identifying where travellers will be located next week, and 2+ weeks.

Travel alerts – travellers are kept up to date with notifications tailored to their itineraries

Travel policy – YOUR.CT gives travellers access to their company’s travel policy documents in order to drive policy understanding and compliance. Travel policies are also stored within Seeqa meaning travellers are automatically directed to make the most appropriate booking selection.

Reports – YOUR.CT gathers and stores reservation and financial data giving clients a high level spend breakdown via their dashboard. Users can see their company’s spend on airfares, hotels, car hire and rail tickets; they can view their top five airlines by spend; compare top 10 travellers by spend and number of tickets; view most frequently booked city pair destinations; view percentage of online bookings and overall adoption rate; and identify advance booking patterns.

Andy Hegley, UK General Manager, Corporate Traveller explains: “We are the only and longest-established TMC specialising purely in clients with an SME business travel spend of £50K to £2M per annum, meaning that we understand the nuances of their business travel requirements better than anyone else.

“Our approach to travel management is based around small teams of highly experienced travel consultants providing personal service, support and guidance to clients with an SME spend locally via our 20 offices across the UK. Each client is looked after by a dedicated travel consultant within the team who builds a close working relationship with that client and delivers exceptional customer service.

“But we also recognise our service-based business model can be complemented by technology in order to drive further efficiencies for our client base,” explains Hegley. “However, that technology needs to be tailored specifically to our clients’ needs in order to benefit, the booker, traveller and manager. That’s why we have invested heavily in developing YOUR.CT to give our clients the right type of technology that is easy to access, simple to use, and supports them with booking and managing travel costs and processes, as well as duty of care obligations. It’s about blending the appropriate mix of expert offline service, with technology solutions that are right for each client’s business.”

Corporate Traveller will be demonstrating YOUR.CT at the Business Travel Show on stand B30. For more information about the TMC’s specialist services for companies with an SME business travel spend, visit www.corptraveller.co.uk

Jan 09, 2018

Staycity Bullish For 2018 As Six New Sites Announced

Following a positive trading year and 12 months of significant growth Staycity Aparthotels has announced a further six new property openings for 2019-2020.

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Jan 09, 2018

Staycity Bullish For 2018 As Six New Sites Announced

Following a positive trading year and 12 months of significant growth Staycity Aparthotels has announced a further six new property openings for 2019-2020.

Finance director Colm Whooley said that Staycity expects 2017 turnover to have grown by 25%, with strong profit margins remaining in line with that of previous years.

“Last year’s results will show growth in turnover and profits for the group,” he said. “During 2017 the board signed off on the company’s five year business plan which will see us operating 15,000 keys by 2022.

“Brexit and general economic environment have remained a risk but we have attempted to reduce that risk where possible with a strategy of growing the business across a number of markets and actively managing currency exposure through foreign exchange hedging,” he added.

During 2017 the Dublin-based company opened aparthotels in Marseille, Lyon and Manchester as well as revealing details of a new premium brand, Wilde Aparthotels by Staycity, the first of which will open in London this Spring, with a second to follow in Edinburgh in 2019.

Later this year Staycity will open in Liverpool’s Corn Exchange building in the heart of the city’s commercial region close to James Street Merseyrail Station, Albert Dock and the leisure development Liverpool One. The property is made up of 212 one- and two-bed apartments.

New locations for 2019 include a 284-key aparthotel near Disneyland Paris with swimming pool with bar and deck, full restaurant, café and lounge area, bar, 183 parking spaces and lakes and gardens. The development is adjacent to Euro Disney in the busy Val d’Europe area.

In early 2019 the company will open in the Venetian mainland suburb of Mestre, part of the territory of the city of Venice, with 175 units. The location is often the preferred starting point for tourists visiting the historic city.

The year will also see the opening of a prestigious Wilde Aparthotel forming part of Charlie Living, one of several new buildings located at the former Checkpoint Charlie on the Friedrichstrasse in Central Berlin. The 48-apartment building is one of two Staycity properties opening in the German capital.

Another site will be added to the group’s Dublin estate in 2019 when it opens in Chancery Lane in the city centre, with 50 apartments. A further 142 apartment building will open its doors on Mark Street in 2020. By 2021, the company expects to have 1,500 keys operating in Dublin.

Preliminary work is also underway on a third Manchester property in St Peter’s Square, expected to open at the end of 2019 with 250 apartments.

“These aparthotels are all in fantastic locations and offer exciting opportunities for us to grow our brand and our estate. The company now has the right team in place to enable and facilitate this expansion, although we look forward to recruiting locally for each of our new properties over the course of the next 12 months,” commented Staycity CEO and founder Tom Walsh.

“This year will be a pivotal one for Staycity with several more deals about to be signed on sites across Europe, as well as the opening of our first Wilde Aparthotel,” he added.

Jan 09, 2018

Expensify And Roomex Team Up To Auto-Expense Hotel Accommodation

Expensify and Roomex will announce a new partnership at the Business Travel Show this year.

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Jan 09, 2018

Expensify And Roomex Team Up To Auto-Expense Hotel Accommodation

Expensify and Roomex will announce a new partnership at the Business Travel Show this year, with the launch of a direct integration that enables companies booking hotel accommodation to auto-expense their hotel bills. Visitors to the Roomex stand will be able to see how the integration works first hand.

Existing Roomex customers will have the option to enable the Expensify integration on their personalised Roomex platform. Expensify customers who are new to Roomex can visit the Expensify.roomex.com site, where they can search for and book hotels and automatically have their booking receipts imported into their Expensify account.Customers will see their hotel billing automatically added to expense reports for seamless expense tracking and reimbursement. For companies with regular hotel requirements Roomex will create a personalised Roomex platform, free of charge.

“We want to create an efficient experience for everyone involved with business travel management. With hotel accommodation being one of the major corporate travel expenses, working with Roomex to automate hotel expenses was a natural partnership that aligns with our vision,” notes Tom Rhys Jones, Head of EMEA Business Development at Expensify.

“It’s a great match,” adds Jack Donaghy, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Roomex. “Our mission is to make the entire end-to-end process of booking and managing hotel accommodation as easy and cost-effective as possible, for example by consolidating all hotel bills onto a single monthly invoice. This seamless integration with Expensify will further enhance the experience of booking through Roomex by automating the expense submission, tracking and reimbursement process.”

The integration with Roomex is part of Expensify’s ReceiptBurner platform, which aims to eliminate receipts once and for all through partnerships with the most commonly expensed merchants. ReceiptBurner automatically imports your receipts directly into your Expensify account. Expensify automatically codes and submits it in a report that’s queued for rapid reimbursement.

Jan 03, 2018

Four Out Of Ten Buyers Will Have Bigger Travel Budgets In 2018

According to research carried out by Business Travel Show, four out of ten buyers (40 per cent) will have bigger corporate travel budgets in 2018.

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Jan 03, 2018

Four Out Of Ten Buyers Will Have Bigger Travel Budgets In 2018

Four out of ten buyers (40 per cent) will have bigger corporate travel budgets in 2018, compared to 32 per cent 12 months ago. Half of buyers (49 per cent) claim they will also have more to spend on air travel and accommodation. However, 45 per cent expect to have more trips to manage next year and 47 per cent expect total travel costs to rise.

This is according to research carried out by Business Travel Show, which was answered by 243 buyers. Business Travel Show is Europe’s leading event for corporate travel professionals and takes place at Olympia London from 21-22 February 2018. Buyers can register for free at www.businesstravelshow.com/register

The poll revealed (please read on for full table of results):

A huge leap in buyers with increased accommodation spend – 49 per cent compared to 32 per cent yoy

Carrie Nederpel, travel specialist in the Netherlands and Business Travel Show advisory board member, said: “From what I have noticed here in the Netherlands, business is booming and, along with that, travel. The need and financial ability for corporate travel is increasing, as are the budgets to do so. The challenge for a travel buyer is how to spend our increase in money wisely and ‘shop around’, as it were. For me, the Business Travel Show is the perfect venue to do this.”

A senior corporate travel manager added: “From my point of view, the growth of corporate travel budgets is in line with company growth and the increase in number of required trips and not necessarily an increase in travel costs.”

David Chapple, Business Travel Show event director, added: “This time last year, geopolitical events such as Brexit and the imminent inauguration of President Trump left many concerned for the economy and the widespread feeling of uncertainty about what the future holds undoubtedly leaked in to the corporate travel market.

“The results of our survey, however, indicate that caution in business travel was short-lived and budgets and growth appear to be healthier than ever. In fact, some commentators have even suggested corporate travel may do better than other industries, as companies invest more in travel to explore alternative trade avenues outside of Europe following the Brexit vote.”

How budgets will compare between 2017 and 2018 including historical research data:

18 vs 17

17 vs 16

16 v 15

’15 v ‘14

14 v 13

13 v 12

12 v 11

Budgets

Bigger

40%

32%

29%

32%

37%

39%

39%

Smaller

12%

21%

The same

48%

47%

Travel costs

Increase

47%

Decrease

13%

The same

40%

Number of trips managed

More

45%

48%

44%

45%

48%

57%

Fewer

15%

37%

37%

41%

31%

22%

The same

40%

15%

19%

14%

22%

22%

Airline budgets

Bigger

49%

40%

33%

33%

39%

Smaller

11%

15%

24%

21%

37%

The same

40%

45%

43%

46%

24%

Accommodation budgets

Bigger

49%

32%

38%

30%

30%

Smaller

24%

14%

21%

27%

43%

The same

31%

54%

41%

43%

Will you book more room nights?

Yes – more

45%

No

24%

Don’t know

31%

Notes to editors:

243 travel buyers took part in the seventh Business Travel Show annual survey in November 2017 with responsibility for managing travel across one or more territories, as outlined below.

The Business Travel Show, held annually in London for 24 years, is Europe’s largest specialised exhibition and conference bringing together over 7,500 European travel professionals. This long established and reputable event provides business travel buyers and managers with the suppliers, knowledge and contacts to help create and develop successful travel programmes.

It is the major event in Europe where travel buyers and managers can evaluate thousands of products and services from over 270 global travel brands to innovative start-up companies covering air, accommodation, travel management and expenses to traveller services, technology and duty of care.

Running alongside the exhibition is Europe’s largest conference programme designed to meet knowledge requirements of beginners through to experienced travel buyers. Independently produced and supported by 175 expert speakers, the 60 topical sessions cover the full spectrum of travel management facilitating peer to peer learning and debate to enable buyers to understand how to buy and manage travel better.

The Business Travel Show provides the opportunity to meet with over 7,500 professionals from across the European business travel community. From peer-to-peer and supplier networking sessions to informal social events, the event allows attendees to build new relationships and to share knowledge and best practice.

Although organisations may already have travel approval systems in place, these predominantly focus on the budgetary factors rather than the risk or security aspects of corporate travel. Anvil’s travel authorisation tool allows travel managers to now include this all important risk dimension without adding any unnecessary administrative burden to their (or their travellers’) already heavy workloads.

“It’s so important that risk mitigation is seen as a key part of any travel authorisation process,” says Matthew Judge, Anvil’s Group Managing Director. “You need to understand the risks you could be exposing your travellers to and be able to properly assess those risks prior to any trip. You then need to ensure that the appropriate risk mitigation measures are in place and are adhered to. This hasn’t always been easy but with our new authorisation tool, we’re helping to simplify this process significantly.”

The authorisation tool works by automatically cross-matching trip details against the dynamic risk data provided via Anvil’s Riskmatics® solution. Should a traveller schedule a trip to an area deemed higher risk, an alert will be automatically forwarded to the relevant manager. Managers can then approve, reject or request changes based on the organisation’s existing policies and/or any other mitigating factors. Should a trip be approved, the traveller can be briefed on additional precautions that they may need to take during their trip or directed to undertake pre-travel training as appropriate. Trips booked to lower risk areas pass through the approval system automatically, thus allowing the travel managers to focus their attention on the higher risk, freeing up more of their valuable time.

Peter Davies, Anvil’s Head of Research and Technical Development states, “When developing the authorisation tool it was important that it could become an integral part of organisations’ existing travel approval processes. We therefore created the tool following the ‘user centred design’ principles. Driving travel approval via policy is often difficult, to say the least. The beauty of Anvil’s authorisation tool is that it requires no change to existing business processes, systems or cultural behaviours. By connecting directly with the Global Distribution Systems (GDSs), the authorisation tool picks up the traveller data without them having to submit any additional forms or requests. This removes the burden of manually entering all of the trip details and ensures that the approval decision process is based on actual booking data, ensuring greater accuracy”.

Survey results reported by ABTA earlier this year reveal that managers’ number one concern for travelling staff is safety, with over half of respondents (59%) worried about security and terrorism when staff travel abroad. Yet despite this, many travel managers are finding much of their own time spent on the cost containment element of travel. Anvil’s booking authorisation tool now allows the all-important risk element to be automatically factored in whilst keeping the end-to-end process simple for travel managers, approvers and travellers alike.

Come see The Anvil Group at the Business Travel Show, which takes place 21-22 February 2018 at London Olympia.

The World’s Leading Airline Consolidator – Mystifly confirms participation in the Business Travel Show 2018

Mystifly, the leading Global Airfare Marketplace, has announced its participation in the 24th Business Travel Show.

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Dec 21, 2017

The World’s Leading Airline Consolidator – Mystifly confirms participation in the Business Travel Show 2018

Singapore HQ, – Mystifly, the leading Global Airfare Marketplace, has announced its participation in the 24th Business Travel Show, scheduled to take place at Olympia, London, on the 21st and 22nd of February, 2018.

The 24th edition of the Business Travel Show, Europe's largest specialized event for business travel professionals, will house over 7,500 travel firms. It will facilitate the building of supplier network and contacts among business travel buyers and sellers to further the development of the Travel Industry.

At the Business Travel Show, Mystifly will showcase its cutting-edge solutions which have earned the organization the title of "World's Leading Airline Consolidator", three times in a row. However, the company’s primary agenda remains the interaction with its existing clientele who were instrumental in the momentous win at the World Travel Awards 2017 and the previous years.

“As a company, we continuously strive to be the first choice for our customers. A hat-trick win at the World Travel Awards sets the premise for us to continue providing world-class offerings to our partners. We look forward to interacting with our customers at the Business Travel Show to gather feedback and incorporate them into our work”, said Rajeev Kumar, Founder, MD and CEO of Mystifly.

You can catch up with the team from Mystifly at the Business Travel Show 2018, London, at booth number – B1410, to know more about their products and offerings.

About Mystifly:

Mystifly is an anywhere-to-anywhere B2B Global Airfare Marketplace offering airfare consolidation from 600+ IATA and non-IATA airlines and 180+ LCCs, sourced from 70+ point-of-sale countries across the globe. Founded in 2009, Mystifly focuses on applying the right mix of technology and inventive thought process to create solutions that disrupt and simplify air travel.

Recipient of the ‘World's Leading Airline Consolidator’ title from World Travel Award in 2015 2016 and 2017, Mystifly’s suite of products empowers over 2500 global clients to service their customers better. This includes 22 of the top 50 UK TMCs, 60+ global OTAs, and nine of the top 10 Indian TMCs, among several others.

Companies Can Now View and Manage Invisible Off-Channel Travel Spend As It Occurs

DALLAS, TX –Traxo, a leader in travel data aggregation and itinerary intelligence, solves the industry-wide problem of tracking off-channel corporate travel ’leakage’ as it occurs. With today’s Traxo FILTER launch, Traxo introduces the first product on the market that provides corporate travel managers with truly comprehensive visibility into their total program spend, in real time. Traxo FILTER extends Traxo’s suite of data management and technology solutions offered to travel agency, expense applications and risk management clients throughout the corporate travel ecosystem.

Industry studies indicate that nearly 40% of corporate travel spend is booked outside companies' official managed travel booking channels, making it invisible to corporate travel managers and complicating their job of managing total program spend and tracking employee whereabouts for duty-of-care purposes.

“Corporate travel managers told us their ideal solution would automatically detect off-channel bookings in real-time, without requiring the employee to take any action (like having to enter their loyalty program credentials or constantly forward travel confirmation emails),” said Andres Fabris, Traxo Founder and CEO. “We’ve engineered Traxo FILTER with exactly that simplicity goal in mind, and the result is a seamless solution that ensures capture of all employee travel booking data across an entire organization.”

Traxo FILTER is already compatible with the three major email systems used by corporations today: Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, and Google G Suite email. And because the implementation of Traxo FILTER is approved and controlled by the company’s own IT department, it is secure, transparent, configurable and fully auditable. Installation can typically be done in as little as 20 minutes.

Once captured, all travel bookings are immediately displayed in an online dashboard that provides corporate travel managers with a real-time overview of employee itinerary information and the company’s entire travel spend. From that centralized dashboard, data can then be seamlessly shared with the company's travel management companies, expense management, risk management or business intelligence applications.

“With Traxo FILTER, corporate travel managers can immediately spot the leakage in their corporate travel programs, without having to wait to reconcile expense and corporate credit card data 60-days after the fact,” noted Fabris. “And by integrating the data captured by Traxo FILTER with their other managed travel services, they can enjoy, for the first time, truly seamless access to all their corporate travel spend – no matter where it’s booked – putting corporate travel managers firmly back in control of their own data.”

"Traxo addresses an important need and provides actionable insights for managed travel programs,” noted Neil Hammond of GoldSpring Consulting, which is evaluating Traxo FILTER. “The ability to capture those 'rogue bookings' that occur outside of the main booking channels can benefit both larger programs addressing residual compliance concerns, as well as smaller programs looking for a lower-cost solution to provide consolidated reporting."

"At DVI, we hear from clients how critical it is to track leakage in their corporate travel programs, and how challenging it is to get accurate, timely access to that data," said Brian Beard, President of DVI, a Traxo integration partner which provides data visualization products to corporate clients. "Working with Traxo FILTER to integrate leakage data into DVI as it occurs is a real game-changer for corporate travel management."

Come see Traxo at the Business Travel Show, which takes place 21-22 February 2018 at London’s Olympia, at Stand B880. Visitor registration is open now at www.businesstravelshow.com.

“Keeping track of traveling employees is becoming exponentially more difficult for companies as a result of the proliferation of new booking sources, incentives to book directly with travel suppliers, and shared economy inventory that doesn’t appear in the typical corporate booking tools,” noted Traxo CEO and Founder Andres Fabris. “We’re thrilled to partner with leading travel risk management providers like Anvil Group, Drum Cussac, and JESI, to help them tackle this data challenge head on for their clients.”

International risk management company, Anvil Group, based in the United Kingdom, is now offering the Traxo CAPTURE email parsing solution to its clients as an embedded feature in its ETMS (Employee Travel Monitoring System), which is used by some of the most prominent corporations across the globe. The integration will enable travelers to forward in confirmation emails for travel bookings as they are made, ensuring location data can be integrated into Anvil Group’s applications in real time.

Matthew Judge, Anvil’s Group Managing Director, said, "The nature of business travel is changing and those of us providing risk management solutions need to embrace these changes and develop services that are forward-looking and flexible. At Anvil, we’re constantly evaluating and implementing new ways to improve customer experience and by selecting Traxo as our email parsing partner, we’ve enhanced our already highly evolved traveler tracking solution even further.”

Drum Cussac, with headquarters in the United Kingdom, will be integrating the Traxo CAPTURE data aggregation technology into its new GlobalRiskManager travel risk management solution for comprehensive traveler tracking, asset monitoring, intelligence and alerting. Initially utilizing the Traxo CAPTURE service for a large university client, Drum Cussac's service will now be made available to all clients looking to ensure the maximum coverage of their travelers' itineraries.

Australia-based JESI integrated the Traxo CAPTURE email parsing and itinerary normalization technology within its journey management software, which is used by clients worldwide in the resource mining, construction, shipping, and community/health sectors. With a reliance on mobility solutions for a widely dispersed base of employees and contractors, JESI clients depend on the travel data aggregation services enabled by Traxo to keep track of employees at all times in places that can present safety challenges.

The Traxo CAPTURE product supports more than 5,600 unique confirmation email and hotel folio formats across HTML, text, and PDF, and spans nearly 40 languages. More than one million unique travel and expense data elements are detectable by the Traxo platform – from airport codes to geo-location of hotels, car rental taxes to valet parking fees, and more. The ability to parse, structure, and normalize detailed itinerary and location data from virtually any source makes Traxo CAPTURE the ideal solution duty of care solutions seeking to augment existing data integrations with global distribution systems (GDS) and travel management companies (TMC), and provide comprehensive, real-time location tracking for their clients.

Come see Traxo at the Business Travel Show, which takes place 21-22 February 2018 at London’s Olympia, at Stand B880. Visitor registration is open now at www.businesstravelshow.com.

Anvil Announces Direct Connection With Airbnb, Helping Corporate Travellers Feel Even More At Home

Anvil, the award-winning travel and operational risk company, announces a direct connection with its marketing leading Riskmatics® system and short-term rental giant, Airbnb.

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Dec 11, 2017

Anvil Announces Direct Connection With Airbnb, Helping Corporate Travellers Feel Even More At Home

Anvil, the award-winning travel and operational risk company, announces a direct connection with its marketing leading Riskmatics® system and short-term rental giant, Airbnb. This direct connection will significantly ease the booking burden and enable organisations to maintain their duty of care requirements for travellers now wishing to use Airbnb as a business travel accommodation provider.

The shared space rental economy is growing in popularity. Many are now making use of these short-term rental options outside of work but are then restricted to more traditional options when it comes to business travel. But the benefits of using such services are clear: more relaxed and homely surroundings for the business traveller combined with reduced costs for the organisation. It’s therefore becoming a more appealing option for all concerned.

As corporate travellers continue to search for a temporary home-away-from-home while they’re on a business trip, their organisations still need to ensure that they are able to track, locate and communicate with them in order to provide the appropriate levels of duty of care. This latest development by Anvil allows clients to do just that.

Historically, any bookings made outside of the standard Global Distribution System (GDS) route did not sit well with travel risk management systems, requiring additional manual administration on the part of the travel booker in order to ensure the data was appropriately received and logged. This often meant that although flight details were recorded, the ultimate accommodation details would be missing, leaving organisations unable to account for their people in times of risk. With Anvil’s Riskmatics® system accepting booking data directly from Airbnb, this is a thing of the past for clients who wish to use Airbnb as one of their accommodation options.

Peter Davies, Anvil’s Head of Research and Technical Development, said: “Corporate travellers and those booking travel on their behalf are busy people and do not want to be bogged down by excessive form filling and admin. The more we can reduce this burden, the better. By building a direct feed from Airbnb, we are now able to capture these accommodation reservations directly. The Airbnb connection mechanism works in the same way as our direct GDS connections, ensuring a smooth and secure transfer of data.”

In April this year, Airbnb released statistics that proved their popularity with the business traveller is definitely on the increase: “Airbnb gives travellers a chance to live in a city when travelling for work. This is one of the reasons employees from more than 250,000 companies – in over 230 countries and territories – have signed up to use Airbnb for work. In 2016 alone, the number of business trips on Airbnb tripled. And today, nearly 10 percent of trips on Airbnb are for work.”[1]

With Anvil’s direct connection to Airbnb, clients can now rest assured that, should they wish to move away from the more traditional hotel booking route, and source accommodation via Airbnb, they can do so safe in the knowledge that their booking details are automatically captured. Organisations can now allow their travellers far great choice and flexibility in their accommodation options whilst still maintaining that all important duty of care provision.